Ingress Apk / Scanner Teardown [1.60.0]

Welcome back to our 10th teardown. This version is currently on its 1% rollout via the Google Play Store. Some of you are lucky enough to have this version now, while others will be receiving it soon. However, the official description states “bug-fixes”, while we know there is a lot more under the hood. So lets take a look.

Missions

In APK since 1.55.0

Mission layouts continue to be fleshed out / slightly changed. From a purely technical standpoint, the amount of server to client code changes are little to none. All the final tweaks seem to be related to language abstraction, layout development and Field Trip.

Field Trip

A possible mission requirement is “View Field Trip card“. This has been a vague reference since the Field Trip classes were blank. Now they are fleshed out and we know exactly how they work. After visiting a portal (not sure if isolated to just missions), you will have an option to view the Field Trip card associated with that portal (assuming one exists). An internal web browser will open up and load that Field Trip card.

For those who don’t know. Field Trip is basically the portals of Ingress with more history and background. Take for example this Field Trip card and respective portal.

Field Trip card

Ingress portal view for that Field Trip card

Mission Details

A few new fields snuck into the Mission detail view called “authorNickname” and “authorTeam“. It appears the majority of Missions will be agent created with the carefully thought out and interesting ones being placed on the top of your regional mission list via good ratings. The agent name / team will be visible on the list to show who created each mission.

At the end of the day, you can’t expect Niantic to make missions for all ~25,000 regional zones, so its good to have agent created content to populate mission lists.

Missions – A Recap

Since it has been 6 versions since Missions were discovered. I thought I would do a quick overview of what we know now.

Missions will be a new tab much like “Training” in which you can launch and complete a set amount of way points for a specific mission. Missions may require you to do any of the following

Hack a Portal

Capture a Portal

Create a Link

Create a Field

Install a Mod

Take a Photo

View Field Trip card

Enter Passphrase (via clues)

You will be able to view

Number of agents who completed a mission

Percent who liked it

Average time to complete mission

After completing the mission you will be

granted a badge (not medal) for that mission to show completion

allowed to rate the mission if you liked it or not

You might have a Mission that works like this (state park based)

Visit this _________ State Park

Hack ______ Portal

View the Field Trip card for __________ Portal

Enter the Passphrase via the hints from _____________ Portal

Ornaments

First seen on the intel map, handshake and 1.59.1 apk. We were given clues that certain portals could stand out from the rest via the below images.

Renamed images via the original Ornaments

In addition to images above, model (.obj) files have been added for these ornaments. This ensures that these ornaments will be available to see via your scanner. On our next set of anomalies (after Helios), we will probably have an easier way to identify cluster and volatile portals.

The only strange part is that these strings were found in the strings.xml of the Android version of Ingress. I can understand some development overlap in the libGDX portion of the application (since libGDX is multi-platform) but string resources are different between Android and iOS. So maybe we labeled APNS incorrectly or are misunderstanding this feature.

Either way, it seems to have generic messages along with handling one attacker vs multiple. Maybe to stop the overwhelming spam of notifications when at an anomaly.

Nitty Gritty

What are these handshake things (knobs) ?
It’s how different version of scanners communicate with one server. Features are enabled/disabled depending on your scanner version. This allows us to see future changes coming, since they are already packed in the APK. Features that stay in knobs can be disabled / enabled at whim with a server update. So for example, removing a knob does not mean its gone from Ingress. It just means it no longer needs a configuration boolean so it’s here to stay. This is how missions are in the APK for everyone but only accessible by some.

Handshake

[added] enableIOSRecruit

[added] enableMissionsConnectivityRecovery

[added] enableMissionsStatePolling

[removed] enableNewsOfTheDay

[added] missionsUpdateDistanceM

[added] missionsUpdateIntervalMs

Build Date

Build September 2

Leaked September 9

Conclusion

The two main features we are following are currently Missions and Ornaments. Both of these features are very close, if not already finished in their development cycle. So it sparks the question what will Niantic bring next? We will see what goodies are brought in 1.61.0. Until then, enjoy 1.60.0.